SHAPE - Situating Hybrid Assemblies in Public Environments

Project details

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CSC - Cost-sharing contracts

Objective

SHAPE is devoted to developing and evaluating assemblies of hybrid, mixed reality artefacts in public places. Hybrid artefacts exhibit physical and digital features and can exist in both physical and digital worlds. They combine interactive visual and sonic material with physically present manipulable devices. Hybrid artefacts can combine to form room-sized assemblies that provide groups of people with a rich sensory experience of a large-scale mixed reality. These assemblies can be deployed in public spaces such as museums and exploratoriums as new kinds of engaging and educational social experience. The consortium combines social and computer science expertise and is concerned to motivate innovation through studies of people's activity in public places and techniques of participatory design. 'Living exhibitions', where results are shown direct to the public, are planned at selected European museums that have agreed to participate. SHAPE is devoted to developing and evaluating assemblies of hybrid, mixed reality artefacts in public places. Hybrid artefacts exhibit physical and digital features and can exist in both physical and digital worlds. They combine interactive visual and sonic material with physically present manipulable devices. Hybrid artefacts can combine to form room-sized assemblies that provide groups of people with a rich sensory experience of a large-scale mixed reality. These assemblies can be deployed in public spaces such as museums and exploratoriums as new kinds of engaging and educational social experience. The consortium combines social and computer science expertise and is concerned to motivate innovation through studies of people's activity in public places and techniques of participatory design. 'Living exhibitions', where results are shown direct to the public, are planned at selected European museums that have agreed to participate.

OBJECTIVESThe objectives of SHAPE are:1. to explore hybrid artefacts and the various relationships that are possible between physical and digital manifestations, and create prototype demonstrators;2. to examine and construct organised assemblies of hybrid artefacts within room-sized environments as a means for delivering a thematically integrated, yet rich, social experience;3. using social scientific methods, to study and develop a detailed understanding of the activities of members of the public as they engage with exhibited artefacts in public places such as museums and exploratoriums.

DESCRIPTION OF WORKSHAPE is distributed across five work packages and four partners with complementary skills and roles. The project will map out different ways of linking physical objects with digital representations so as to develop a typology of hybrid, mixed reality artefacts. We shall construct assemblies of hybrid artefacts at different levels of scale and explore means for managing inter-artefact communication in ways, which link low-level protocols with applications.The project will establish an archive of empirical materials collected at a variety of public places such as museums and exploratoriums. We will analyse the methods employed by visitors as they interact with exhibited artefacts and each other. On the basis of empirical analysis, a design framework for informing the development of hybrid digital-physical artefacts will be produced. We intend to create, through participatory design with personnel from collaborating museums, two public exhibitions demonstrating technologies developed in the project as a means of integrating project results across partners and evaluating emerging technologies in practical, public settings.